Vodafone was my 11th
telecommunications client in 11 different countries. I am pleased to report that
all achieved their project objectives . . . which for most of them was to
win their national quality/excellence award . . . thank you Vodafone for keeping
the streak alive . . . and, thank you for the special honor of inviting me to
work with a truly outstanding organization that never stops improving.

As Baldrige marks its 25th anniversary, you
may be interested in knowing what it was like to serve on the Board of Examiners
when it all began in 1988. In fact, nobody from the current Baldrige Program was
there. Here are some highlights:

Your fellow Examiners were truly a
'Who's Who' of top quality executives from many of America's largest
businesses . . . not that it necessarily made them good Examiners . . .

You received personal letters
thanking you for your service from some of America's best known CEOs . . .
and. your name appeared in full page ads in the Wall Street Journal and
similar prestigious publications.

You were given contact information
for about a dozen CEOs in your region for purposes of contacting them and
soliciting funds to support the Award

Unlike today's easier standard,
'world-class' processes and results were part of the requirements in the top
scoring band.

Where is the
excellence?: US healthcare is
ranked last among large nations
and none of 20 Baldrige HC Award winners are ranked as top tier providers based
on the (Truven
Health Care Analytics (Top Hospitals Everest Award) or
US News & Report HEALTH(Honor Roll Award). The Mission of the Baldrige Award Program is to
improve American competitiveness . . . this can only be done by focusing on
achieving world-class performance. The Secretary of Commerce appears to be
steering away from the Mission when health care organizations that are not in
the top tier of the last place nation are honored as “role models” for
excellence . . . this appears to be an obstruction to competitiveness. If the
Award was refocused on world-class excellence (its Mission), the original
integrity of the Award would likely be restored.

And, holding Baldrige once again accountable to its
world-class competitiveness Mission, may result in something much more important
than making America more competitive and saving trillions of dollars . . . it
can save countless lives . . . refocusing the Baldrige Health Care Award
away from community-/regional-class excellence back to world-class competitive
excellence needs to happen now . . .

Was
Texas Health Presbyterian Dallas (the hospital at the center of
the Ebola controversy) selected for a site visit at the time that their first of
three Ebola patients was there? . . . and did they cancel the Baldrige Site
Visit? The Dallas Morning News reported: "Presbyterian
loses shot at national award amid Ebola case disputes"

Site Visit by Phone???

A
'Site-less' and 'Visit-less' Site Visit?: Let's hope not . . .
but, The Dallas Morning News article also reports something that if correct may
be particularly troublesome for the integrity of the Baldrige Award: "Hospital
spokesman Wendell Watson said late Saturday that Baldrige officials had
expressed concern about its staff’s safety but
considered replicating the visit with telephone interviews."
If true, an offer to replicate a site validation visit with telephone interviews
is unprecedented, inconsistent, and would have given unfair advantage
to Texas Health Presbyterian Dallas. We may never know with certainty if this
actually occurred because information related to site visits is appropriately
confidential . . . so, maybe the Commerce Department should consider an
independent investigation to determine if what was reported is accurate.
Hopefully, an offer to do a telephone site visit was incorrectly reported and
never occurred but it is important to the image and integrity of the award that
the Commerce Department know with certainty what actually occurred and that they
inform the public to the extent that is appropriate.

Baldrige and Health Care . . .
was the separate health care award category strategy introduced several years
after the business-focused award program flawed from the beginning?

Baldrige was established to be a "Business"
Award: So, why is the Commerce Department sponsoring a separate
"health care award" when the Baldrige Award was established by President Reagan
for businesses? In fact, that is precisely why it was located within the
Commerce Department. Why not consider heath care organizations as 'service'
organizations as is done in the leading Asian, European, and Middle East Award
Programs? Or, is there fear that doing this would result in no 'health care
winners'? . . . let's hope not but, if that is indeed true, health care
organizations may benefit by understanding how much they need to improve. More
importantly, it may help to restore the prestige of the Baldrige Award to the
high level it deservedly earned during its early years.

Has the bar for winning the
Baldrige Health Care Award been lowered from 'World-Class Great' to merely
'Community Good'?

"Worst-In-Class
Health Care?": The US Health Care System is
again ranked last among large nations (Source:
The Commonwealth Fund, June
16, 2014)

Ominous Quote: "It is, I guess, PC, widely believed,
that to say American health care is the best in the world, It's not."
Dr. Donald Berwick, former Baldrige Judge and Administrator of the Centers
for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)

Good not Great?: There
are no Baldrige Health Care winnersamong the Honor Roll (top 17) US HC organizations listed in
US News and World Report
HEALTH (September 2014)

3
New HC Winners at the Bottom: Texas is rated by as being in
the bottom quartile of "The States With the
Worst Healthcare Systems" by
The Commonwealth Fund (May 1,
2014) . . . yet Baldrige awarded it highest award to three HC organizations
from Texas . . . a fourth Texas HC organization was selected as a finalist
in 2014 but they cancelled due to Ebola patient being there.

Why not require
evidence of World-Class Performance as was done in the early years of the award?

Given that at the time of the Baldrige site visit
Baylor-Plano management and staff, affected patients, the media, the community,
and the local justice system all appear to have been aware of the problems that
led Baylor Plano to declining the award, it appears fair to ask:

On what basis

did the US Secretary of Commerce announce them as a
Baldrige winner and cite them as a "role model" of excellence?

Hopefully, the
circumstantial evidence above is not representative of Baylor-Plano overall and
that we will learn more about the root cause . . . so far, we have not learned
more which leaves the impression that those involved are hoping it will go away
with time.